Patrul Rinpoche describes her as almost identical to Dechen Gyalmo (with Damaru and hooked knife), and there is no mention of Khatvanga in WMPT--all the images I find of Vajravarahi or Vajrayogini are different from this.

Does anybody have a good quality image or preferably images of this form of the Dakini?

Can anybody tell me if it's actually Vajrayogini or if it's actually vajravarahi??

What I learned is that the one with the katvanga and the ornaments and some of the hair up is a sambokakaya form and the one we are looking for, without ornaments, katvanga, necklace but with hair falling down, is the dharmakaya form.

I think it depends about which Guru Yoga you are talking. I have a pic for the Ngondro Guru Yoga and that is definitely yogini. Standing on straight legs with left hand damaru above her head and one of those knives at her right hip.

I think there are two traditions of visualisation for the Guru Yoga used in the Longchen Nyingthig ngondro (it's actually the outer LN Guru Yoga and separate from the LN ngondro text, but...)

One has Vajrayogini (she is named as such (Dorje Naljorma) in the text) with curved knife in right hand and skull cup in left (presumably also with khatvanga.) Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's commentary, for example, has this. The other seems to come from Patrul Rinpoche and has Vajrayogini as Dechen Gyalmo with skull drum in right hand and curved knife in left.

The text lists the abbreviated objects she holds, dri and thod, in that order and generally the right hand object is always listed first. (thod just means skull and could be skull cup or skull drum) This again shows that Jigme Lingpa probably had a standard Vajrayogini image in mind in the text.

Nilasarasvati wrote:That's interesting. My teacher has always been sort of casual and dismissive of which one to use, giving different tsakli and instructions on different occasions. Does anybody know which is used when?

Which what is used when? Different Vajrayogini visualisations in LN ngondro Guru Yoga? Depends on lineage of your lama. If you have both lineages you can do whichever one you like. It really doesn't matter. They are both Vajrayogini and both Yeshe Tsogyal.

I imagine the issue arose because the outer Guru Yoga practice was discovered before the Dechen Gyalmo practice, and some LN lamas thought it would be nice to incorporate Dechen Gyalmo into the outer lama'i nyaljor, but this is just a guess.

As far as tsakli and that goes, I didn't think there was an empowerment for LN outer Guru Yoga. They just give the Rigdzin Dupa empowerment, in my experience, if that.

Thanks for being such a resource on Longchen Nyingthig. I've been curious about which form of this Dakini to visualize for 40 years. My original LN Teachers held both lineages and they never really specified exactly how to visualize Her. Interestingly, They said it was "ok" to use the Khyentse lineage version, but They also made it clear (at least to me) that, to Their minds, the other version was Their preferred. However, even They could never find a picture to show us. So we all visualized the Khyentse version by default.

You're welcome, Pema.One of my lamas said it doesn't matter, another said to definitely follow Patrul Rinpoche's commentary, so I did that. The pictures on himalayan art are great, especially the one that shows all the deities as visualised in the Dechen Gyalmo sadhana, but their stances are more dynamic than I'm used to. Dechen Gyalmo is often visualised standing with straight legs and one foot raised like the pictures on this page.